1. The handful of readers who have so far commented are pretty much split. Some like it, others don’t. That’s pretty typical for any redesign, either of a newspaper or its website.

2. Inexplicably, there are no RSS feeds. The old feeds are broken and I can’t find anything at the site that points to the new feeds. There is a listing for sitemap / RSS in the bottom-of-the-page index list, but there’s nothing about RSS at the end of that link. (I’m not the only one who has noticed this: it’s been pointed out by several of the people I follow on Twitter. So far no reaction from any of the Sun staffers.)

I suspect the latter isn’t a big deal for most of those who use the Sun’s website. But for those of us who rely on RSS as our primary news delivery system, the lack of feeds basically takes the Sun out of the equation.

I want to like the Vancouver Sun and CanWest’s various properties but I can’t.

Their 1998 site without RSS and cookie cutter news repurposed in multiple outlets by the CNS and cheap feeling newsprint (when compared to the Globe and Mail) makes me not want to go their website or buy their paper.

Could somebody please improve their website (not having RSS is very very strange in 2008 especially if they care at all about SEO!)?

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A blog on journalism, media-related matters and some occasional personal stuff, by Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C. You can email me or follow me on Twitter.